Irish Water has been told they should come to Meath County Council and explain itself over constant breakdowns throughout the county. Councillors are in open revolt as their local communities in towns and villages suffer outages. This led to demand from the councillors to Irish Water officials to come to an urgent meeting with them to see what is to be done about the situation.
The issue was raised at the county council meeting yesterday by Independent Cllr Noel French who called on the councillors to call on Irish Water to come to the council chamber to explain why its service is “so abysmal” and “I want to know what they’re going to do to fix the problem”. It seemed like a failed entity, he said, and added that there were problems in Ballivor, Clonard, Dunshaughlin and Duleek. A school in Ballivor had had to close because of a water outage. Water tankers were taking water from Trim and Navan.
It was a ridiculous situation to have to bring water from Navan to Trim. In his own municipal district there were problems in Ballivor, Longwood, Clonard. “We are just getting over problems in Trim and Enfield. “When will people get a reliable service? People wili understand an occasional outage but this is happening on a regular basis. We would get away with an occasiona basis but on a regular basis is just ridiculous”, Cllr French said.
Irish Water was not answerable. “We can’t get answers. We as local councillors can’t. The Tanaiste in reply to Deputy Aisling Dempsey said that Irish Water would not answer questions in the Dail. I got an answer today from Irish Water from a query made four weeks ago”.
Social Democrat Cllr Ronan Moore said that when speaking about more houses being built, an essential element in that was having water supply. It had been a constant issue within the Trim district where the general public could not understand why there were continuing outages in the areas mentioned by Cllr French. Meath County Council was doing its job in making sure that all relevant actors were requested in making sure that all services would be available. There was a big difference in saying there was capacity while at the ssame time not recognising that the frequency of outages was such that it was not something that was fair. There were opportunities to build houses in certain areas but the history of Irish Water was such that the level of confidence they could have to deliver houses that would have regular water was left wanting.
It was unacceptable for the Government to have an entity under its jurisdiction that was failing to answer questions, he said. Sinn Fein Cllr Helen Meyer said it would be a really good idea to get the chairperson of Irish Water into the council chamber to tell councillors why the system wasn’t working.
Fine Gael Cllr Alan Tobin said that there were areas of Ashbourne that didn’t have water because of low pressure. Pressure was turned down at night in order to replenish water towers. One thing he found hard to swallow was that a lot of restaurants and pubs were struggling at the moment because of additional costs. They needed water in order to exist. He had had a call from the owner of an Indian restaurant complaining about lack of water. He could not prepare vegetables in the restaurant and there were hygiene issues because of a lack of water. Commercial water rates were being paid but people were not getting the service they should get.
Fine Gael llr Paddy Meade said that Irish Water “was answerable to no one”. They didn’t seem to be able to answer the issues people were raising. He knew that a number of businesses had had to close down because of uncertainty over water supplies. He would like to see a survey done on the cost to Co Meath businesses arising from water supply disruption. The Staleen water pipe had burst on a number of occasions and that had had a dramatic effect on the localality.
Independent Cllr Nick Killian said that the Irish taxpayer had been asked to pay €7.1 million for a new pipe at Windmill Hill, Curragha to supply water to that whole area, “reliant, going great. Now we have a situation where for the third weekend on the trot we have no water. It is not good enough. Restaurants are losing out on business because of it”.
Fianna Fail Cllr Stephen McKee said that people in Duleek and Donore had had a very bad weekend because of water outages. “We have a very serious situation throughout the county. It is really impacting local people but especially local businesses. I support Cllr French’s call to bring Irish Water in here. There is a real need to put pressure on Irish Water”.
Sinn Fein Cllr Maria White said the water situation was having a real impact on people in East Meath. People could not have showers because the pressure was not good enough. It was not acceptable that people had their businesses closing down, that families were suffering. You cannot get through to Irish water. They have a line but they don’t answer it. Most of the time calls were put through to a call centre where persons answering the calls did not have English as their first language and did not understand what the problem was.
